


How To Live One Man's Life

by RocketRabbits



Category: Be More Chill
Genre: Alternate Ending, Continuation of canon, Gen, Post-Canon, book canon, book michael's gross but he does really love jeremy and i hope I catch it here, first person POV, first person present tense, maybe someday ill actually finish the other one, short fic, two fics for one fandom holy shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 18:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocketRabbits/pseuds/RocketRabbits
Summary: Christine has the book. Every gorey detail about the whole damned chain of events.Once again, Jeremy Heere gives his future to someone else.This time, he's confident he'll cope with the outcome.





	How To Live One Man's Life

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to get the idea out and barely looked it over. It's not beta'd, but my dear friend(who has not read/listened to BMC, bless their soul) was gracious enough to tell me if it reads smoothly. Any mistakes are mine. Tone tries to fit canon but I can't be sure it comes across that way.

Michael drove me home only a little after everyone else left. We’d sat in near silence after the laughter subsided, huddled against the mural like a couple of hobos. We could have left earlier, I guess, but he didn’t suggest it and I didn’t move. He’d grabbed a handball out of his pocket at some point, held up the little black thing in the dark and sort of half-grinned, and that’s how I spent the rest of the play. Playing catch with Michael Mell in the dark behind the school, delaying the inevitable.  
  
Until the inevitable came. Until I crawled into bed mostly numb at six thirty the next morning, squip silent, fingers aching. I didn’t wake up until one in the afternoon.  
  
I call Michael when I wake up, and it feels good to choose to do it.

“Yeah?” He answers on the third ring. “Is it done?”  
  
“No,” I say, “I still need to get the Mountain Dew.”  
  
“I can-“  
  
“Nah,” I say, not sure if he was going to offer to drive me somewhere or bring some over, “Thanks.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Thanks for calling me a dick.”

He laughs into the receiver. “Don’t get all emotional on me now, man.”

“I mean it though,” I say. “For not being gentle when I didn’t deserve it. Thank you.”  
  
“Alright. I was still probably nicer than you deserved.”  
  
I can’t really argue. “You were.”  
  
He _hmm’s_ on the other end. “Don’t thank me again.”  
  
“I won’t.”

It’s quiet for a few more seconds before he hangs up without a goodbye. I listen to the dial tone drone knowing he won’t call back and I won’t call him. It’s just robotic, I guess. Something to distract from how quiet my head is, now.  
  
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mom is quick in catching me at the table, and I feel an uneasy bit of deja-vu.  
  
“Getting printer paper. I have a project.”  
  
“And why are you waking up at one o clock?” She looks at me longer than I’m comfortable with. I break eye contact when I realize she won’t.   


“Did the project last night, after the play. It’s not due until mid next week, I just wanted to get it done.” It wasn’t quite a lie. She accepts it anyway, coupled with a soft smile.  
  
“There’s my boy. How’d your play go?”  
  
“Went okay. Opening nights are always hit or miss.”  
  
“Is there another one tonight?”  
  
“No, not this time.” If there was, I probably wouldn’t have told her I wouldn’t be going. “I’m gonna go, if that’s okay.”  
  
“Is Michael driving you?”  
  
“I’m walking.” She accepts that too and looks back at her papers, conversation done, my status as painfully average, nothing to worry about son that much closer to being regained. My stomach churns. _Average_.  
  
Well. Average would have to be okay.

 

 

 

Startup.

A few minutes. Nothing.

Startup.  
  
JEREMY. I TOLD YOU I WOULD BE UNSTABLE.

Well, you’re on.

I wonder if I look like I’m arguing with it to other people that have squips. Can they see it on my face? The squip doesn’t answer. It must really be low on functionality.

YOU’VE GOT TO DISSOLVE ME.

I’m trying. I’m going to the Sunoco right now. Why Mountain Dew Code Red?

  
WHY MOUNTAIN DEW AT ALL?

Fair. Why aren’t you speaking Spanish or telling me to kill someone?  
  
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS, JEREMY.

Heh. You sound like you have a hangover.

GRR.

Okay, okay. I walk into the Sunoco, blasted by the same cold air that’s outside, only now it smells like metal instead of leaves. Buying a soda is a relatively painless procedure. I’m out of the store in five minutes, tops.

  
Should I deactivate you?

IT’S NOT LIKE I’LL FEEL IT.

Feels kinda rude not to. Knowing you’ll be knowing you’re dying.

PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL EXISTENTIAL. I WILL NOT BE DYING. AND YOU it stops and makes kind of a stuttering noise, flickers back in a pitch slightly higher, SHOULD JUST GET ON WITH IT.

I stop a little way down from the Sunoco and lean on a bike rack. You ruined my life, I tell it one last time. So fuck you. It doesn’t answer, so I keep talking at it. I guess you couldn’t have ruined it without me, though. Can’t always pin the blame on technology, I guess. The squip doesn’t answer.

 Shutdown.

The Mountain Dew tastes awful, but this time it’s awful with a cherry aftertaste. I wait a few minutes before swallowing the whole bottle in a few solid gulps. I don’t feel anything different, and I can’t tell if it worked, so I wait another minute or two. I burp, and nothing in my head answers.

So that’s done. Printer paper comes next.

 

\--

 

“Christine,” I say, and Monday morning math class is the worst time to say anything, but I’m not sure I’ll see her again otherwise. “Uh. Hear me out.” She absolutely does _not_ want to hear me out. I can’t blame her. “This’ll explain everything. About. Why I did that. And what you mean to me. And. Here.” I drop the book on her desk, something like three hundred pages I didn’t really read over that the squip wrote Friday night.

I head back to my seat by Jenna and Anne, and they snicker, and I sink lower in my seat.  
  
“Heere?” Mr. Gretch calls.

“Present.”

Michael is waiting outside the classroom when it lets out. “Shouldn’t you be in class?” I ask. He has study hall when I have math, I know, but I ask anyway.  
  
“How’d it go?”

“She has it,” I sigh. “That has to be enough.”

Michael claps me soundly on the shoulder. “And the squip?”  
  
“I think it’s gone. Drank the soda, won’t answer when I try to talk to it. If it’s not dissolved, it’s certainly not operational.”  


Michael nods a nod I know means he has no answer but wants to look like he does. He tugs once at his headphone cord. “Good. How do you feel?”  
  
“Why the twenty questions?”  
  
“Just trying to be a friend.”

He goes upstairs in approximately ten seconds. Michael doesn’t look like the kind of kid that’s concerned about getting to class on time, but he, like most students at Middle Borough high, is motivated by detention. “I don’t know. Head’s too quiet.”  
  
“I could provide some music. Probably not the same.”  
  
“No Weezer,” I say, but I don’t know that I’d really mind if there was.  
  
“See you later, man.” Michael catches the railing and swings onto the second step, pulling his headphones up. I walk straight.

Chloe catches my eye and immediately looks away. I deserve that. I don’t know what I’d tell her if she did look my way.  
  
I’m back to square one, I guess, and it’s just as crushing as it was to begin with.

\--

After a week, Christine still doesn’t talk to me. She doesn’t even look me in the eye, and I don’t know if she’s read the book. She might’ve burned it. I guess I wouldn’t blame her.  
  
I watch Michael play handball behind the school a few times, unwilling to let go of having somewhere to be after school. I visited Rich in the hospital, and that was fine, and I’ll see him when he gets out, but still. It’s really just him and Michael, and who knows how long Rich will be there at all.  
  
I catch myself trying to ask for a probability of ending high school with more than one friend. I figure I could probably do it, if I wanted to, and even if my math was wrong it’d be in the ballpark. But maybe sometimes uncertainty is okay.

“You have to stop moping.” I didn’t notice Michael was there. I panic for just a second, _funny how your optic nerves can be blocked to your advantage_ , but no, probably not. Probably I just was focused on something else.  
  
“I’m not moping.”  
  
“You are, man.”  
  
“I had a traumatic experience, Michael.”  
  
“Yeah,” Michael says, “And I’m not gonna let you relive it over and over. Come on. Let’s watch movies at my place.”

I stand up and follow him to his car. “Didn’t you say you were hanging out with Nicole today?”  
  
“I can see her some other time.”  
  
“You can see me some other time, too.”  
  
He rolls his eyes and unlocks his car door. “Don’t, Jeremy. This is the moping. Let me choose to be with you.”

I don’t have an answer, so I get in the car.  
  
\--

“I’ve got these weird bubbles on my fingers,” I say at lunch.  
  
“ _Mmmrph,_ ” Michael leans across to look at them. “Blisters?”  
  
“Yeah, but like a bunch all at once.”  
  
“My mom gets that sometimes. Are your hands really dry?”

“Uh? Kinda?”  
  
“Might be eczema. Use lotion the right way for once, should probably clear up- ah.” Michael glances behind me, and I don’t want to turn around until he says, “I’ll be right back.” And then I’m left with whoever is behind me.  
  
I turn around. Christine doesn’t look happy to be there. “I read part of your book, and I don’t care.”  
  
“Uh,”  
  
“I don’t care about how pretty you think I am and what lengths you went to to get me to notice you and I definitely don’t care how often you masturbate.” I choke on my milk. She keeps talking. “I don’t hate you, Jeremy. I hate that you ruined our play.”  
  
_Our_ play. “I’m sorry,”  
  
“I’m sure you are. Doesn’t change that you embarrassed me in front of everyone.”  
  
“I know.”

“I think we could still be friends,” she says, and I almost explode right there. Friends. _Friends._ I can handle friends. “but you have to leave me alone for a while. I’ll find you.”  
  
Okay. I deserve that. “Okay.”  
  
“So I’m going to leave, and you’re going to leave me alone, and maybe actually apologise?”  
  
I nod. “Christine, I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of everyone. And I’m sorry I was so weird to begin with.”

She nods back. “Thank you. You aren’t forgiven.”  
  
I deserve that, too.  
  
She leaves, and it feels a little anticlimactic. _Friends. Friends. Friends._  
  
“So how’d that go?” Michael asks, swinging easily back into his seat.  
  
Well. How did it go? I dropped my future into someone else’s hands and survived it on my own. “She says we can be friends some day.”  
  
“Wow, friends?”  
  
“It’s more than I deserve.”  
  
“Jeremy.” Michael’s got this look now, and a voice, that tell me when I’m being too self-deprecating. I guess I didn’t used to say this stuff out loud.  
  
“I’ll take it. I’ll be fine.” And weirdly enough, I think I will be. No voice in my head has to tell me so.

**Author's Note:**

> Idk how I feel abt Christine here, but I tried to do her justice.
> 
> hmu @jaredkleinmanapologist on tumblr to talk about this precious furry boy.


End file.
